In Retrospect: The making of a sort of bad short film; pt. 2: Production

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Amen.

Production—the period when the movie is filmed—began without me. It was a weekend morning, and I was asleep. The script hadn't been finalised. Scene one didn't change between versions of the script, so we figured it was okay.

The first scene involved an early morning routine. Rian slept over at Thomas' house the night before so they could film while the Sun was yet low.

I'm sure they went through a good deal of trouble to film that, so it's a shame we had to throw that footage out.

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This is part 2 on the making of our first short film. Read part 1: Pre-Production here.

The film itself is on YouTube here, or you can watch it here:

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Hold on. Why'd you have to throw out that footage?

I'll get to that.

The first thing I was involved in filming was scene 2. In the film, scene 2 takes up 29 seconds.

We spent four hours on it.

It, also, had to be thrown out.

We could all make it to film on a Thursday. We had some elaborate ideas for scene 2, and I wasn't sure how they would work out.

I arrived at school—where we would film—dressed to play the boss. White dress shirt, sweater, tie. I wore a small amount of cologne, because I had some vain idea this would help with "method acting." I had one line in the scene.

The scene, according to the script, was this:

After entering work, Jack walks by a row of cubicles. He greets everyone by name—mechanically. He even greets a cubicle without noticing that it's unoccupied.

(The original original script was meant to be comical. In that version, one of the employees was wearing a wizard hat and rolling dice. Jack doesn't notice.)

Then, in his cubicle, Jack gets an alert on his phone. It's time for coffee break.

"Hey, Jack."

Jack looks up and the camera pans. His boss is standing at the entrance. "Meeting in one minute," the boss says. "I owe you a break."

I arrived at school and waited by Thomas' locker. He arrived carrying a tripod and camera equipment. Rian had told him what we needed, and he'd borrowed it from the school.

Thomas' friend Fang met us. He was our only extra.

"Well, I guess we can't do the scene where he greets everyone," I said. "Where are we going to film the office scene?"

"In the computer lab," Thomas said. The same place we'd started writing the script.

"Hmm." The computer lab. Can't feign a cubicle there. "I don't think that'll work. It doesn't look like an office. Besides, everyone will know what it is. It won't be believable."

"It'll be fine," he said. "You'll see. We have a plan."

When Rian arrived we set up in the computer lab on the floor above. I couldn't see how this would work. Everyone would be able to tell the place was empty.

I pointed that out.

Rian said it would work if we filmed at a certain angle.

We turned on the camera and tested the audio. The mic on the camera worked, but not the boom mic.

We couldn't even figure out how to attach the mic to the boom pole. I ended up hooking it on in a sketchy way. It seemed to stay, but if it fell, we'd be in trouble.

The audio wasn't coming through. Rian played with it for at least half an hour.

It worked.

Then we filmed.

During pre-production Rian had begun a shot list for scene 1. While he wasn't looking, I finished it for the whole film. 80-something shots.

Based on my learning from YouTube, I'd incorporated some distinct cinematographic intentions. Scenes with "old Jack" (when he was ruled by his phone) were static, centred, and plain. Shots with April and with "new Jack" were dynamic, free, and natural. I'd indicated trouble in some places with Dutch tilts, and kept close ups for important things.

When we did the filming, Rian was holding the camera. He was the only one of us who knew how to use it. And he'd taken a filmmaking class, so we had a high opinion of his cinematographic knowledge. He hadn't looked at the shot list.

"Here's how I think we should we should film this," I said, and outlined the pan I gave in my description of the scene above. The idea was that the audience doesn't see the boss until Jack does.

Rian didn't like that. I don't remember why. It may have been because the shot was technically impossible, with our set constraints. No—now I remember. It was because it would have us look for an extended period at Jack's back, and this, he said, is against the rules of cinematography.

(I still think it would have worked.)

That was the relation between the shot list and the shots for the rest of filming. There was none.

After a few takes, Rian played the footage back.

It looked bad. The frame rate was low. A moving arm might be a blur.

We hoped this was a problem with the camera's display, and moved on. We had a small montage to film, too. By the time we were done, it was dark out and the school was empty. We'd somehow spent three hours filming.

Later we found out: the frame rate was bad. Not just that day, but when the first scene was filmed.

The footage needed to be re-shot.

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The script called for two scenes at Subways. Thomas figured he'd secure our locations, so he was named production manager. He usually could, too. If you asked him, he'd say it was because of his natural charm.

It was a Friday afternoon. Thomas had been going to the same Subways weekly for the past two years. He walked there—a short walk from school—before catching the bus to leave, as he always did. But this time, as the man behind the counter—Indian, but with good English—did not know, it wasn't for a sandwich. He'd brought food this time. (From what I know of him, probably something with tuna or avocado.)

Thomas walked to the counter and looked around. Empty, which was not unusual for this hour.

"Hey," he said. "I'm not getting a sandwich today."

The man gave a confused look.

If this didn't work out, the whole project might have to be cancelled.

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Thomas also had to secure the coffee shop in the basement of our school.

He found his way there one afternoon. He'd only been once previously. The place looked plain. Which was good, since it was supposed to be part of an office.

Thomas stepped into line and waited. Once at the end of the line, he asked the lady at the counter about using the place as a location for a short film.

The owner was out for the day, she said, so Thomas would have to come back tomorrow morning.

So he did. He arrived at 8:45 and got in line.

This place was needed to properly set the coffee-break scene. It would work perfectly as a set, if we could get it. And having a good set for this scene might make up for the mediocre office set.

The person at the counter told him to come back in 15 minutes.

This place would work perfectly as a set.

If we could get it.

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Thomas said to the man at Subways: "I'm working on a short film for the John Abbott [our school] short film contest and was wondering if you would mind if we used here as a location. We'll only take up a small area and it will only be during times when you're not busy, like Saturday afternoon."

He agreed, but only to times when they weren't busy, like weekend afternoons.

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Thomas went on a walk and returned to the coffee shop 14 minutes later.

He waited in line again. When he got to the counter, the lady called to someone in the back.

The owner, Candy, emerged. "What can I do for you?"

Thomas explained the situation.

She asked at what time and for how long we would need the place for.

He told her the date, and gave a filming time of about an hour.

She agreed.

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The script called for two leads: Jack, played by Thomas, and April.

We needed an April.

Thomas had an idea for someone, but he doubted that would work out.

I, too, had an idea.

A week or two before, in a church youth group on a Friday evening, we (the youth group, not Thomas and Rian) were playing 'two truths, one lie.'

One of my truths was that I'd written a screenplay. (At this point, Thomas hadn't contributed to the writing.) They asked about it, and I told them. One of the people there—Steph, a model studying to be a teacher, who has black hair and is taller than Thomas and Rian and just shorter than I—said she loves acting, and volunteered if we ever needed anyone.

A couple weeks later, I said "As a matter of fact..."

So we had an actress.

There were two worries.

The first is that we hadn't seen Steph act. I thought maybe we should 'audition' her first, but we didn't have time.

We didn't have time. That was the second worry. Our schedules had to line up well enough, with the shooting time left.

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The film was due on April 5th—a Friday—and we needed that week for editing.

We were in the week before, the last week of March. Steph had to leave for the weekend on Friday afternoon. So did I.

Our schedules didn't match for most of the week.

Shooting for most of the film had to be done on Thursday and Friday afternoon. These were the last possible dates for filming, and we only had two afternoons. Recall that a 29 second scene (which we later threw out) in our ten minute film took four hours of our time.

The first thing we filmed on Thursday was the coffee-break scene. Thomas had told the owner we'd be there an hour, and that's how long we hoped to be.

The first at-least-20-minutes were camera setup. Rian and I talked about how we'd shoot for a bit, then he prepared the camera and mic as I watched the actors rehearse and made acting suggestions. (If I recall, I also debated character motivations with Thomas. We should have outlined in more detail before writing the script.)

Lines hadn't been memorized yet, so we took an 'approximate' approach (or you might call it a 'good enough' approach) to lines. The lines as you hear them in the film aren't the lines as written.

At one point, the actors were saying completely different things. Thomas had printed the wrong version of the script for himself (my fault—I'd renamed the proper version).

Time was running out, and we had to film.

There were some acting quirks we should have stopped, but didn't. Steph would exhale-laugh after a few of the lines, and Thomas would put his hand to his chin. That happens in the film once, and it's so horribly unsubtle as to render the scene cartoonish.

We'll remember next time, I guess.

We went over-time in shooting. The owner came back and asked if we were still filming. Yep.

We got a few decent takes in, and finished far over one hour.

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Next we had to re-film the office scene we threw out and had to film the conference scene.

Easter egg: If you look closely at the scene where Jack's boss interrupts him, you'll see Jack writing a satirical document about a little red cow named Joseph Cowlin who writes the Cowmunist Manifesto. The office worker in the background has pictures of Marx and Lenin on his computer.

We found an abandoned classroom in the basement to shoot the conference scene. We set up the desks as a long table. (You can't tell at alllllllllllll.)

Thomas had gotten us a group of extras, but they'd all cancelled. We only had one left: Fang, who's helpfulness must be commended.

Thomas went to the bathroom.

"If you see anyone in the hallway, ask them if they want to be in a short film," I said.

Rian and I stayed behind and set up the camera and tried to figure out how to shoot this without people. How could we show nobody and not make it look cheap? We couldn't. It would look cheap either way, but without showing anyone it would look far cheaper.

Thomas was taking awhile, so I went out to look for him.

I walked into the hallway, laughed, and ran back.

Thomas was walking our way followed by a herd of extras.

"What is this?" I asked.

"It's just my natural charm."

Turns out the Dungeons & Dragons club was having a meeting, and he found and asked them.

So we got to film the scene properly.

Easter egg: On the whiteboard we wrote a bunch of nonsense. For example, I made a graph—x-axis: gold, y-axis: $.

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Friday our time was limited. Steph and I had to leave at a set time in the afternoon. We had two Subways scenes to film.

We walked to the Subways and Thomas talked to the guy at the cash. Same guy. Friday was not what Thomas had told the guy earlier, so we had some doubts.

The guy at the cash put Thomas on the phone with the owner.

Rian set up the camera. I paced.

I heard Thomas on the phone saying things like: "I understand. No, that's okay, I understand."

I said to Rian: "That doesn't sound good."

Rian continued working on the camera setup.

Thomas came back to us and said everything was alright. We could film.

"Then what was the 'I understand' about?"

"Oh. He said we have to stop if it gets busy.'"

So we began.

The camera wouldn't cooperate, and that took time. Time, again, wasn't something we had in excess. The main problem was lighting, or colour balance, or something. I don't know. That's why Rian takes care of these things. One scene was shot completely, then had to be re-shot because we needed to switch the lighting.

There was the same problem with the lines. This time though, there was some debate about the lines we disagreed on. I insisted on changing them, and Thomas thought they were fine. Rian didn't want to get into a screenwriters' conflict. In the end we changed them a bit, but not completely.

We took a few takes. Things went slowly. It didn't look like we'd make it.

For one of the scenes Rian had the idea of filming the dialogue freehand. In retrospect (roll credits) that didn't look so good. In the future we'll save freehand for, um, not dialogue.

We got the last bit of filming done just after we were supposed to leave.

That's a wrap.

(Not really, though. Rian and Thomas had a couple cutaway shots to film, but they could do those without us.)

Now came editing, which was pretty much out of my hands. Editing can break a wonderful film.

I'll cover that when the next part of this series comes out.

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Disclaimer: The story is reconstructed from rough memory. Dialogue is an estimation, and pretty much invented by myself. Etc., etc.